Loss of Sync
Posted: Wed 15 September, 2010 Filed under: Geeky, iPhone, Technology, Thoughts 4 Comments »When I got the iPhone (and on previous phones before that) one of the best things I used was a service called Zyb.com, which allowed you to synchronise contacts to their online database from your old phone, and then pull them down to the new phone. It made life *so* much easier, allowing you to do in ten minutes what otherwise turned into a dragged out and nightmarish process of copying contacts across one by one.
When Herself’s mother got an iPhone recently, I planned to do the same thing using Zyb, but I couldn’t. Because Zyb.com is no more.
A couple of years back now, Vodafone bought out Zyb, because it was such a good service. At the time they said it would carry on being available, and they’d got no plans to shut it down. Now though, they’ve closed down Zyb, and relaunched it (kind of) as part of Vodafone 360°. It’s nowhere near as good, fast or useful as it was as Zyb.
I’m really annoyed by this – despite having been a subscribed/signed-up user to Zyb, I didn’t get any notifications about the service closing down. It’s only having done other research about it that I find Zyb closed on 31st July.
As yet I haven’t found a decent replacement for Zyb that was as smooth and painless (and fast) as Zyb. Vodafone 360 took nearly three hours to sync things, and even then it’s not as good. Any suggestions?
I use Microsoft exchange, but not sure how that works with iphones.
Erm… Sync it with iTunes? Works better if you have a Mac, obv, as it merges all phone contacts with your main address book. Should still work with Windows address book though…?
Or get a MobileMe account (v. pricey is the only problem), and anytime you add a contact it’ll be wirelessly backed up in the cloud 5 minutes later.
To be fair, that was 180 minutes quicker than you’d expect from the name …
Sync contacts to Google? A few of us are doing that instead of MobileMe syncing as it’s free and also with the hope that I can use them elsewhere if I ever move off iOS.
More info here – http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/